Core:
noun, the most important part of a thing, the essence; from the
Latin cor, meaning heart.

Volume 1.15

This Views Featured Pages & Sites

May 20, 2002

The Views Featured Webpages(links to offsite pages)

Columns, essays, and news
articles (new at top)

Anti-Semitic
Pogrom at San Francisco State (05/09/02) newBy Laurie Zoloth at FrontPage Magazine
I cannot fully express what it feels like to walk across campus
daily, past maps of the Middle East that do not include Israel, past posters
of cans of soup with labels on them of drops of blood and dead babies,
labeled canned Palestinian children meat, slaughtered according
to Jewish rites under American license, past poster after poster
calling out Zionism = racism, and Jews = Nazis. This is not
civic discourse, this is not free speech, and this is the Weimar Republic
with brown shirts it cannot control. This is the casual introduction of
the medieval blood libel and virulent hatred smeared around our campus
in a manner so ordinary that it hardly excites concern  except if
you are a Jew, and you understand that hateful words have always led to
hateful deeds.

Jewish
Blood Libel Poster at SFSU (April 2002) newBy Scott Armel-Funkhouser of University of California
at Berkeley
This poster, funded by the Associated Students of San Francisco
State University, was posted on campus in April 2002. This is perhaps
the most grotesque and explicit incarnation of the blood libel
observed in the free world since the Nazi Holocaust. It was generated
on the campus of a public university by students, using public money.
The poster included the names of the following organizations: Associated
Students, GUPS (General Union of Palestinian Students), MSA (Muslim Student
Association) and WIA (unidentified). The poster incorporates the two
most common elements to this medieval racist slur. It suggests (1) that
Jews ingest the flesh and/or blood of children, and (2) that there are
rites associated with the Jewish religion which detail how to perform
this cannibalism. Note that this vicious racism is not directed specifically
at Israel but at Jews, for it reads, slaughtered according to
Jewish rites.

Anti-Semitic
riot at San Francisco State University (05/16/02) newBy Melissa Radler in The Jerusalem Post
After being surrounded by a mob of students shouting, Hitler
didnt finish the job, and Get out or well kill
you, pro-Israel students at San Francisco State University are finally
finding an ally against hate. The university president is so fed-up with
the hate-filled atmosphere on the Bay Area campus that he has asked the
local district attorneys office to help bring pro-Palestinian hate-mongers
to justice.

Colleges
Only Protect PC Speech, Groups (05/16/02) newBy Glenn Harlan Reynolds at FoxNews
But so far this event, and the university’s tepid response, is simply
the latest stage in a long-standing and widespread trend of giving some
student groups the permission to engage in behavior that the university
would not permit for a moment if it came from groups not favored as politically
correct. The result of impunity, of course, is escalation. Just as the
toleration of broken windows and other petty acts of lawbreaking
leads to more serious crime, so a policy of tolerating acts of lawlessness
by overpoliticized students leads to more serious problems.

University
of South Carolina Mandates Political Indoctrination and Orthodoxy
(05/13/02) newAt Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
The University of South Carolina (USC), in a required course for
a degree-granting program, has adopted Guidelines for Classroom
Discussion that demand adherence to a narrow set of partisan political
assumptions  on pain of being graded poorly for honest disagreement.
Although USC is a public institution, bound by the First Amendment, it
has created an ideological loyalty oath that constitutes a
profound threat to both freedom of speech and freedom of conscience in
South Carolina and across the country.

Womens
studies mandates seen as threats to free speech (05/16/02) newBy Ellen Sorokin in The Washington Times
The course syllabus, distributed in January, specifically outlines
eight prerequisites during class discussion, which counts for 20 percent
of the students overall grade. The course  Womens
Studies 797: Seminar in Womens Studies — is listed on the
programs Web site as required for a certificate of graduate
study in womens studies. One of the prerequisites is that students
acknowledge that racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism and other
institutionalized forms of oppression exist.

Berkeley
Course on Mideast Raises Concerns (05/16/02) newIn The New York Times by Chris Gaither
The political tensions in the Middle East have once again roiled
the University of California, with the most recent incident focused on
a catalog course description.... The listing for the course, The
Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance, one of the choices
for a required course in reading and composition, was pulled for review
last week by university officials after protests by civil liberties and
pro-Israeli groups.... The last line of his course description drew the
most ire, especially among civil libertarians: Conservative thinkers
are encouraged to seek other sections.

Replacing
Airport Screeners Proves Tough (05/15/02) newIn Washington Post by Sara Kehaulani Goo
After 4,800 people applied for 600 federal airport screening jobs
at Baltimore-Washington International, the Transportation Security Administration
confidently removed the job application from its Web site. Then the problems
started. Hundreds of applicants either failed the governments tests
for prospective screeners or they didnt even show up for the exam,
according to a TSA official. Surprisingly, the numbers of the latter
were higher than we expected, he said.

Global
Warming Models Labeled Fairy Tale By Team of Scientists
(05/14/02) newAt Cybercast News Service by Marc Morano
A team of international scientists Monday said climate models showing
global warming are based on a fairy tale of computer projections.
The scientists met on Capitol Hill to expose what they see as a dearth
of scientific evidence about global warming. Hartwig Volz, a geophysicist
with the RWE Research Lab in Germany questioned the merit of the climate
projections coming from the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC.) The IPCC climate projections have fueled
worldwide support for the Kyoto Protocol, which aims to restrict the greenhouse
gases thought to cause global warming.

Climate
change faults and fears (05/12/02) newBy Pete du Pont in The Washington Times
While climate models cannot be expected to simulate future weather,
they should be able to accurately depict the Earths present climate
and to simulate changes in the frequency and type of the weather events
that make up climate. Since they cannot, GCM predictions of
climate change are statistical exercises with little bearing on reality
and certainly should not serve as the basis for government policy.

Jimmy
Carter: America basher (05/15/02) newBy Jonah Goldberg at TownHall
Its an unusual thing for a former president to more or less
choose sides against the United States and with a hostile nation ruled
by a ruthless dictator. Unusual, that is, in the sense that most U.S.
presidents  current or former  dont do this sort of
thing. Unfortunately, Carter is the exception that proves the rule.

Death
rattle? (05/13/02) newBy Laura Miller at Salon
Beyond the familiar schism between the Sunnis and the Shiites, the
faith is spectacularly diverse, from the mystical brotherhoods of the
Sufis, to the puritanical Wahabbites, to (what remains of) the relatively
secularized cosmopolitan elites of more developed countries like Egypt.
It makes as much sense to draw conclusions about all Muslims on the basis
of the beliefs of the Taliban or bin Laden as it does to expect a Quaker
to light candles to Santa Barbara or a Unitarian minister to plant bombs
in abortion clinics simply because other people who call themselves Christians
do so.

Beyond
the Numbers: A hopeless state (05/15/02) newBy Ron Dermer in The Jerusalem Post
In fact, the recipe for making a suicide bomber is one part fanaticism
and one part hope. The fanaticism is bred in a culture of death, where
terrorist recruits are meticulously brainwashed to believe that their
noble ends justify any means. Still, a fanatical mindset only sets the
fuse. Hope is the spark that lights it. Suicide bombers would not be so
quick to die if they didnt believe that the cause they so fanatically
pursue will be advanced by their sacrifice.

Gazas
Children Worship Martyrdom (05/14/02) newIn The Washington Post by Hamza Hendawi
In Gazas funerals for shaheeds, or martyrs, and
in rallies by Palestinian factions such as Arafats Fatah or the militant
Islamic group Hamas, children as young as three or four are outfitted with
combat fatigues, masks and toy guns. Such occasions routinely attract hundreds
of children, all accustomed by now to the deafening noise made by gunmen
firing in the air.

Exploding
Myths: Why Israels war on terrorism is working. (05/13/02) newBy Jonathan Chait at Slate
Palestinian terrorism does not result from Israels occupation
of the West Bank and Gaza, but from Israels existence. Palestinian
terrorism long predates the 1967 occupation; the Palestine Liberation
Organization was formed in 1964, three years earlier. But hasnt
the more recent phenomenon of suicide bombing come about because of long-simmering
Palestinian despair? Not really. Suicide bombings started only after the
1993 Oslo Accords, which provided Palestinians with their best opportunity
for a state.

Columnist
Andrew Sullivan Bites Paper; Paper Bites Back (05/14/02) newIn The Washington Post by Howard Kurtz
Andrew Sullivan, the confrontational conservative columnist, has
been attempting the high-wire act of writing for the New York Times while
frequently whacking the Times for liberal bias on his Web site. Now the
tightrope has snapped. Sullivan, who once wrote a biweekly column for
the New York Times Magazine, says he has been barred indefinitely
from writing any more for the magazine. The popular Weblog writer
says the directive came from Executive Editor Howell Raines. 

New
York Times v. Sullivan (05/14/02) newBy Nick Schulz at Tech Central Station
There is already chatter among the chattering asses dissecting Sullivans
banishment. Slates Mickey Kaus and John Ellis of Fast Company fame
suggest it is because of Raines need for control. Meanwhile the
folks at The American Prospect  the terrific lefty publication edited
by Robert Kuttner  say that explanation is way off base. Actually,
they call it paranoid. They say Sullivan was dropped because
he has taken shots at the Times for its biased coverage and shoddy reporting.

The
Cultures of Newsrooms: A Book Unfit for The New York Times
(05/15/02) newBy Nat Hentoff in The Village Voice
Unlike Bernard Goldbergs bestselling Bias, McGowans
Coloring the News has received generally favorable reviews, even
in such papers as The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times,
which are sharply criticized in his book. But the influential New York
Times Book Review has so far ignored McGowans indictment of much
of the press  an analysis that, as Peter Schrag, no right-winger,
says in the Columbia Journalism Review, has focused attention
on important and troubling issues.

The
news we heard from a guy at Handgun Control (05/16/02) newBy Ann Coulter at Town Hall
But for bald-faced lies, nothing beats the [New York] Times
preposterous characterization of Supreme Court precedent. The most recent
case directly raising the Second Amendment was United States vs. Miller,
decided in 1939.... The Miller case simply defined the types of guns protected
by the Second Amendment. Reviewing the case of two bootleggers charged
with failing to pay federal taxes on a sawed-off shotgun, the court concluded
that the instrument was not covered by the Second Amendment.

Guns
are bad. The New York Times says so. (05/08/02) newBy David Nieporent at Jumping to Conclusions
The Justice Department submitted briefs to the Supreme Court on
Monday that said that the Second Amendment protected an individual right,
not just a collective right, to bear arms.... And then the [New York]
Times had to try to prove that this is a novel theory, that John Ashcroft
was going against established law. Unfortunately, since he wasnt,
the Times had to make something up: The Supreme Courts view
has been that the the Second Amendment protected only those rights that
have some reasonable relationship to the preservation of efficiency
of a well regulated militia, as the court put it in United States
v. Miller, a 1939 decision that remains the courts latest word on
the subject. Actually, this cleverly clips the Supreme Court quote
in just the right part so that she can paraphrase it incorrectly.

Lawyer
says animals have rights too (05/17/02) newIn Contra Costa Times from Reuters
Basing his arguments on well-documented studies of their mental
powers, emotional bonds, social skills, language and self-awareness, Wise
says there is also increasing evidence to suggest that African elephants,
African Gray parrots, honeybees and dogs may merit such legal rights.
In an age when it would be unthinkable to use newborn human babies, the
profoundly senile, or the insane for biomedical research or display them
for public entertainment, Wise asks why dolphins, chimps or elephants
 some of whom are more sophisticated than tiny infants  should
have to endure such indignities.

Fighting
for Moe: Activists Pursuing Legal Status for Animals One Case at a Time
(05/13/02) newAt ABCNews.com by Amanda Onion
Moes owners think they know whats best for him. So does
the city of West Covina, Calif., so does the Animal Legal Defense Fund,
and so does the director of a local sanctuary. The problem is, even though
hes 36 years old, Moe the chimp cant speak for himself. Thats
partly why the custody battle between Moes owners and the city of
West Covina has continued for nearly four years. Its also why a
growing cadre of prominent lawyers is lobbying to broaden the way we define
all animals and animal rights in the U.S. court system.

Germany
votes for animal rights (05/15/02) newAt CNN without Byline
A majority of lawmakers in the Bundestag voted on Friday to add
and animals to a clause that obliges the state to respect
and protect the dignity of humans. The main impact of the measure will
be to restrict the use of animals in experiments. In the end 543 lawmakers
in Germanys lower house of parliament voted in favour of giving
animals constitutional rights. Nineteen voted against it and 15 abstained.

Darwinism
in a flutter (05/11/02) newReview by Peter D. Smith ofOf Moths and Men: Intrigue,
Tragedy & the Peppered Mothat Guardian Unlimited
The question Hooper sets out to answer is why such a shoddy piece
of scientific research was so readily accepted by the scientific community
and allowed to attain iconic status in evolutionary biology. Her answer:
because scientists wanted to believe it. Once it had been cited enough
times, it became an irrefutable article of faith. Hoopers meticulous
research provides a fascinating insight into the fallibility of scientists
 after all, as she points out, they are only human.

Anchor
Steam: Why the Evening News is Worse Than OReilly
(05/10/02) newBy Rob Walker at The New Republic Online
So what did I learn in three weeks of watching the evening news?
Basically that the network news, which defends itself against detractors
by invoking the earnest sobriety of its broadcasts, contains as much hype
and fake populism as any of its cable competitors. In fact, in some ways
its actually worse. As distasteful as the cable shout fests can
be, they generally assume that their viewers can handle a detailed discussion,
conflicting views, and lengthy segments on a particular issue.

Why
is morality a dirty word? (05/13/02)By Dennis Byrne in The Chicago Tribune
We are a diverse nation founded on respect for others beliefs,
religious or otherwise. But that principle has become subverted by this
hell-bent determination to avoid discussion of the moral aspects of conduct.
When you think of it, this avoidance makes no sense, because we are a
nation operating on such concepts as justice and equality  concepts
that are fundamentally moral in nature.

Christianity
turns the other cheek: Where is the outrage when a church is desecrated?
(05/13/02)By Raymond J. de Souza in The National Post
It needs to be said. The occupation of the Church of the Nativity
by armed Palestinian terrorists was a gravely anti-Christian act. Much
has been made of how the basilica was filthy but not seriously damaged.
To speak only of what happens to a church physically is to miss the point.
One of Christianitys holiest shrines was profaned by armed terrorists.
It is blasphemy to use the house of God as a military refuge. For more
than a month, the faithful were denied access to the basilica to pray
while the gunmen used its status as a house of prayer as a tactical advantage.

Reliving
9/11: Too Much? Too Soon? (05/12/02)In The New York Times by Julie Salamon
Television has long been the defining medium for great and terrible
national events like war, assassinations and presidential elections. But
nothing in the past has generated this sheer volume of reportage and commentary,
because Sept. 11 was an unprecedented event occurring in an age of unprecedented
media exposure.... The variety and quantity have been staggering 
valuable (much of it), but also alarming.

Megachurches
as Minitowns (05/09/02)In The New York Times by Patricia Leigh Brown
Southeast Christian is an example of a new breed of megachurch 
a full-service 24/7 sprawling village, which offers many of
the conveniences and trappings of secular life wrapped around a spiritual
core. It is possible to eat, shop, go to school, bank, work out, scale
a rock-climbing wall and pray there, all without leaving the grounds.
These churches are becoming civic in a way unimaginable since the 13th
century and its cathedral towns. No longer simply places to worship, they
have become part resort, part mall, part extended family and part town
square.

Is
anti-Catholicism the new anti-Semitism? (05/09/02)By Rev. Ephraem Chifley in The Age
Considering that most instances of paedophilia involve not priests
but live-in step-fathers, clerical celibacy cannot be considered a significant
element in this tragedy. Strange, isnt it, that cartoonists and
comedians dont make jokes about paedophilia and mums new boyfriend,
or that there are so few voices calling for a royal commission into marriage
break-up and child protection? That, of course, would call for society
to examine its substitution of personal fulfilment for duty  far
easier to attack a large and slow-moving target, like the church, especially
as it is apt frequently to say inconvenient and frightening things.

Doing
Nothing is Something (05/13/02)By Anna Quindlen in Newsweek via MSNBC
It is not simply that it is pathetic to consider the lives of children
who dont have a moment between piano and dance and homework to talk
about their day or just search for split ends, an enormously satisfying
leisure-time activity of my youth. There is also ample psychological research
suggesting that what we might call doing nothing is when human
beings actually do their best thinking, and when creativity comes to call.
Perhaps we are creating an entire generation of people whose ability to
think outside the box, as the current parlance of business has it, is
being systematically stunted by scheduling.

Whos
ugly now? (05/04/02)By Mark Steyn in The Spectator
Muslims killed thousands of Americans, but America doesn’t have
anti-Muslim political parties — just a goofy President who hosts a month
of Ramadan knees-ups at the White House and enjoins schoolkids to get
an Islamic penpal. America has millions of Muslims, but they don’t firebomb
synagogues and beat up Jews, and, if they did, the police wouldn’t turn
a blind eye.

Bush
is right: Skip international court (05/08/02)By Editors of The Seattle Times
President Bush is right to pull out of the treaty for the International
Criminal Court, which is an agreement that would give a foreign court
jurisdiction over acts committed by U.S. soldiers. This is not the International
Court of Justice, or World Court, which has existed since
1945 to settle disputes that governments bring to it. This court is to
have jurisdiction over individuals. It promises to act only if national
courts dont, but it will make the decision to intervene itself,
which is a breach of national sovereignty.

The
New York Times Gloats Over Popes Illness, Awaits His Death
(05/09/02)By J. P. Zmirak at FrontPage Magazine
It fills Keller, and liberal Catholics, with intolerant rage that
a Church is permitted to exist which claims continuity with the
past and divine authority, which refuses to cave in to their opinions,
which dares to dissent from dissent. They will not follow their consciences
 which point the way to the Episcopal church down the road 
and theyre furious that they cannot coerce the consciences of other
Catholics, pull down the Churchs leadership, destroy her internal
consistency and integrity, then smoke a joint in her rubble.

How
Jenin battle became a massacre (05/06/02)By Sharon Sadeh at Media Guardian
In line with the prevalent tradition, the liberal British press
has made an extensive and creative use of figurative language in its reports,
which betrayed both bias and an attempt to elicit emotional response from
the readers which could be translated into increased sales circulation.

The
Big Jenin Lie (05/08/02)By Richard Starr in The Weekly Standard
Precisely a month ago, on April 8, the Palestinian news agency Wafa
was reporting that Israel had committed the massacre of the 21st
century in the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin. Medical
sources informed Wafa of hundreds of martyrs. This was
a lie, concocted not only for local consumption  to keep the Palestinian
people whipped up in a patriotic, Israel-hating frenzy  but mostly
for export to the West.

The
brutal Afghan winter hits Jenin: Announcing the first British Press Award
For Total Fantasy (05/06/02)By Mark Steyn in The National Post
Nonetheless, in recognition of my London friends spectacularly
inept record since Sept. 11, I am proud to announce the inauguration of
the British Press Award For Total Fantasy. Journalists can enter as many
of their reports as they wish. Cant decide whether that story based
on a Hamas press release is more risible than that dispatch based on the
Radio Taliban lunchtime news? Hey, send us both! Winners will receive
a grand prize of five thousand pounds!!!! However, in keeping with
traditional Fleet Street standards of numerical accuracy, when the cheque
eventually shows up a month later itll be for £8.47.

DUPED!
When journalists fall for fake news (n.d.)At Society of Professional Journalists by Chris Berdik
Media hoaxes are nothing new. Both Ben Franklin and Edgar Allen
Poe wrote satirical yarns and passed them off as news articles. And in
the 19th century, frontier newspapers were filled with tall tales of murder
and mayhem. It seems that as long as theres been mass media in America,
theres been somebody around to monkey with it. Yet there is something
new, as it turns out. In recent years, the publics confidence in
and regard for news media has plummeted.

The
Internationalist (05/03-09/02)Christopher Hitchens on George Orwell in Weekly Literary
Supplement of LA Weekly
Orwell was an early and consistent foe of European imperialism and
foresaw the end of colonial rule. He was one of the first to volunteer
to bear arms against fascism and Nazism in Spain. And, while soldiering
in Catalonia, he saw through the biggest and most seductive lie of them
all  the false promise of a radiant future offered by the intellectual
underlings of Stalinism.

The
Dinosaurs Are Taking Over (05/13/02)Jane Black interviews Lawrence Lessig at Business Week
Online
Who should control the Internet? If Stanford University law professor
Lawrence Lessig is right, the Internet will soon belong to Hollywood studios,
record labels, and cable operators  corporate giants that he says
are trying to cordon off chunks of the once-open data network.... Lessig
argues that imminent changes to Internet architecture plus court decisions
that restrict the use of intellectual property will co-opt the Net on
behalf of Establishment players  and stifle innovation.

Two
Cheers for Colonialism (05/10/02)By Dinesh DSouza in The Chronicle Review
There is nothing uniquely Western about colonialism.... The West
did not become rich and powerful through colonial oppression.... The reason
the West became so affluent and dominant in the modern era is that it
invented three institutions: science, democracy, and capitalism. All those
institutions are based on universal impulses and aspirations, but those
aspirations were given a unique expression in Western civilization....
The descendants of colonialism are better off than they would be if colonialism
had never happened. 

The
SAT Comes Full Circle: Proposed changes in the Big Test guarantee more
racial special-pleading. (05/06/02)By Heather Mac Donald in City Journal
Racial quota pushers are laying a big trap. For years, they have
argued that the college admissions aptitude test, the SAT, discriminated
against blacks and Hispanics.... Despite its faulty arguments, the race
industry easily persuaded colleges virtually to ignore low SAT grades
when evaluating black and Hispanic students. Now, the race industry is
about to claim its biggest victory of all  dismantling the SAT entirely.

Disassembling
the Catholic Church, Public Education and the U.S. Navy (05/01/02)By Diane Alden at NewsMax
If the leadership in all the institutions dont get a grip,
speak up and out, defend Western civilization and traditional beliefs,
the scandals of the Catholic Church will pale in comparison to the horrors
inflicted by the facilitators and change agents
of the despotic left. Our war on terrorism should include a war on the
ideas and the people who promote moral relativism and the use of trends
like diversity and sensitivity training to produce the new statist man.

Conservatism
can survive despite liberal bias (05/05/02)By Debra J. Saunders in The San Francisco Chronicle
Of course the news media are liberal.... Better to get the facts
with a little bias than no facts at all.... Besides, most reporters 
not columnists, who are paid to be opinionated  try to keep their
ideology under wraps. Most also strive for balance within a story. Its
in the story ideas, however, that the bias really shows.

Biologists
Sought a Treaty; Now They Fault It (05/07/02)In The New York Times by Andrew C. Revkin
A treaty enacted nine years ago to conserve and exploit the diversity
of species on earth is seriously impeding biologists efforts to
catalog and comprehend that same natural bounty, many scientists say....
As a result, biologists say, in many tropical regions it is easier to
cut a forest than to study it.

Fall
and Rise of Christianity (05/04/02)In The Wichita Eagle by Kristin E. Holmes
When scholars talk about the death of Christianity and the rise
of the secular state, Penn State University professor Philip Jenkins just
remembers the south. Not south as in Georgia or Mississippi, but south
as in sections of Latin America, Africa and Asia. There, Christianity
is not only alive but thriving. Christianity is not in free fall,
said Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Penn State.
Its booming and growing very fast in absolute and relative
numbers.

A
Hard Look at Jenin (05/07/02)By Richard Hart Sinnreich in The Washington Post
But before Americans, assaulted by dramatic pictures of Jenin refugee
camps rubble-strewn streets and shattered buildings, draw hasty
conclusions about the Israeli Armys recent operations, we had better
face up to an uncomfortable reality: In an urbanizing world in which enemies
actuated by ideological or religious fervor feel no obligation to conform
to Western norms of military behavior, scenes such as those in Jenin are
likely to increasingly become the rule in war rather than the exception.

The
End of History? (Summer 1989)By Francis Fukuyama in The National Interest
The triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is evident first of
all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western
liberalism. In the past decade, there have been unmistakable changes in
the intellectual climate of the worlds two largest communist countries,
and the beginnings of significant reform movements in both. But this phenomenon
extends beyond high politics and it can be seen also in the ineluctable
spread of consumerist Western culture in such diverse contexts as the
peasants markets and color television sets now omnipresent throughout
China, the cooperative restaurants and clothing stores opened in the past
year in Moscow, the Beethoven piped into Japanese department stores, and
the rock music enjoyed alike in Prague, Rangoon, and Tehran. What we may
be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a
particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such:
that is, the end point of mankinds ideological evolution and the
universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human
government. This is not to say that there will no longer be events to
fill the pages of Foreign Affairss yearly summaries
of international relations, for the victory of liberalism has occurred
primarily in the realm of ideas or consciousness and is as yet incomplete
in the real or material world. But there are powerful reasons for believing
that it is the ideal that will govern the material world in the long run.

An
Explosion of Green (Apr. 1995)By Bill McKibben in The Atlantic
In the early nineteenth century the cleric Timothy Dwight reported
that the 240-mile journey from Boston to New York City passed through
no more than twenty miles of forest. Surveying the changes wrought by
farmers and loggers in New Hampshire, he wrote, The forests are
not only cut down, but there appears little reason to hope that they will
ever grow again. Less than two centuries later, despite great increases
in the states population, 90 percent of New Hampshire is covered
by forest. Vermont was 35 percent woods in 1850 and is 80 percent today,
and even Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island have seen woodlands
rebound to the point where they cover nearly three fifths of southern
New England. This process, which began as farmers abandoned the cold and
rocky pastures of the East for the fertile fields of the Midwest, has
not yet run its course.... This unintentional and mostly unnoticed renewal
of the rural and mountainous East  not the spotted owl, not the
salvation of Alaskas pristine ranges  represents the great
environmental story of the United States, and in some ways of the whole
world. Here, where suburb and megalopolis were
added to the worlds vocabulary, an explosion of green is under way,
one that could offer hope to much of the rest of the planet.

The
Doomslayer (Feb. 1997)By Ed Regis in Wired
The world is getting progressively poorer, and its all because
of population, or more precisely, overpopulation. Theres
a finite store of resources on our pale blue dot, spaceship Earth, our
small and fragile tiny planet, and were fast approaching its ultimate
carrying capacity. The limits to growth are finally upon us, and were
living on borrowed time. The laws of population growth are inexorable.
Unless we act decisively, the final result is written in stone: mass poverty,
famine, starvation, and death. Time is short, and we have to act now.
Thats the standard and canonical litany.... Theres just one
problem with The Litany, just one slight little wee imperfection: every
item in that dim and dreary recitation, each and every last claim, is
false.... Thus saith The Doomslayer, one Julian
L. Simon, a neither shy nor retiring nor particularly mild-mannered
professor of business administration at a middling eastern-seaboard state
university. Simon paints a somewhat different picture of the human condition
circa 1997. Our species is better off in just about every measurable
material way, he says. Just about every important long-run
measure of human material welfare shows improvement over the decades and
centuries, in the United States and the rest of the world. Raw materials
 all of them  have become less scarce rather than more. The
air in the US and in other rich countries is irrefutably safer to breathe.
Water cleanliness has improved. The environment is increasingly healthy,
with every prospect that this trend will continue.

A brilliant parody:

Transgressing
the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity
(Spring/Summer 1996)By Alan Sokal in Social Text
There are many natural scientists, and especially physicists, who
continue to reject the notion that the disciplines concerned with social
and cultural criticism can have anything to contribute, except perhaps
peripherally, to their research. Still less are they receptive to the
idea that the very foundations of their worldview must be revised or rebuilt
in the light of such criticism. Rather, they cling to the dogma imposed
by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual
outlook, which can be summarized briefly as follows: that there exists
an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual
human being and indeed of humanity as a whole; that these properties are
encoded in eternal physical laws; and that human beings can
obtain reliable, albeit imperfect and tentative, knowledge of these laws
by hewing to the objective procedures and epistemological
strictures prescribed by the (so-called) scientific method.

... and, in explanation, ...

A
Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies (May/June 1996)By Alan Sokal in Lingua Franca
For some years Ive been troubled by an apparent decline in
the standards of rigor in certain precincts of the academic humanities.
But Im a mere physicist: If I find myself unable to make heads or
tails of jouissance and differance, perhaps that just reflects
my own inadequacy. So, to test the prevailing intellectual standards,
I decided to try a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment:
Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies  whose
editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew
Ross  publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it
sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors ideological preconceptions?
The answer, unfortunately, is yes.... Whats going on here? Could
the editors really not have realized that my article was written as a
parody?

Networks
Need a Reality Check: A firsthand account of liberal bias at CBS News.
(02/13/1996)By Bernard Goldbert in The Wall Street Journal
There are lots of reasons fewer people are watching network news,
and one of them, Im more convinced than ever, is that our viewers
simply dont trust us. And for good reason. The old argument that
the networks and other media elites have a liberal bias is
so blatantly true that its hardly worth discussing anymore. No,
we dont sit around in dark corners and plan strategies on how were
going to slant the news. We dont have to. It comes naturally to
most reporters.

There
is No Time, There Will Be Time (11/18/1998)By Peggy Noonan in Forbes ASAP
When you consider who is gifted and crazed with rage... when you
think of the terrorist places and the terrorist countries... who do they
hate most? The Great Satan, the United States. What is its most important
place? Some would say Washington. I would say the great city of the United
States is the great city of the world, the dense 10-mile-long island called
Manhattan, where the economic and media power of the nation resides, the
city that is the psychological center of our modernity, our hedonism,
our creativity, our hard-shouldered hipness, our unthinking arrogance.

The
1911 Edition Encyclopedia Britannica
This 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica is filled with
historical information that is still relevant today. It fills 29 volumes
and contains over 44 million words. The articles are written by more than
1500 authors within their various fields of expertise.

newThe
September 11 Web Archive
This collection of archived documents was commissioned by the Library
of Congress to preserve digital materials covering the events of September
11, 2001.

newUS
Election 2000
This collection was commissioned by the Library of Congress to archive
digital materials covering the Election of 2000. It contains 800 gigabytes
of data gathered from 8/1/2000 to 1/21/2001.

A chronicle of high-level USA government actions
in September 2001, at two websites:

Ten
Days in September (WP)
This series is based on interviews with President Bush, Vice President
Cheney and many other key officials inside the administration and out.
The interviews were supplemented by notes of National Security Council
meetings made available to The Washington Post, along with notes taken
by several participants.

HTI
American Verse Project
The American Verse Project is a collaborative project between the
University of Michigan Humanities Text Initiative (HTI) and the University
of Michigan Press. The project is assembling an electronic archive of
volumes of American poetry prior to 1920.

What
We Think of America (Granta)
In this issue twenty-four writers drawn from many countries describe
the part America has played in their lives  for better or worse
 and deliver their estimate of the good and the bad it has done
as the worlds supreme political, military, economic and cultural
power.

OxBlog
The political rantings of Josh Chafetz, a graduate student in political
theory at Oxford, Dan Urman, a graduate student in international relations
at Oxford, and Anand Giridharadas, a junior at the University of Michigan
spending the year at Oxford.

A four-part series Profiles in Discourage
by Media Minded on his experiences in a mid-sized city at
a mid-sized newspaper taken over by a gigantic media conglomerate:

Part
I
In the mid-1990s, my small Southern city was struck by a series
of newsworthy deaths. Within the space of a year, three or four black
men had been killed trying to dash across a freeway that ran beside their
public housing project. The reason? A pedestrian bridge over the freeway
was locked. Why had it been locked? The residents of the housing project
requested that the city lock it to prevent drug dealers and other scum
from invading their neighborhood. Youre probably thinking, Well,
you write one longish story explaining all this, then move on to the next
days news. Oh no. This was a springboard for a weeklong series
on the terrible plight of poor black people who were isolated
(false) and forced to dash across a freeway so they could
take part in the life of the community (again, false). It was ready-made
melodrama about the terrible effects of institutional racism
that fell apart under ordinary scrutiny.... The entire series was apparently
designed to garner some journalism awards (it didnt) and win the
papers new managers approval among the citys minorities (it
did). The net result was that the city added a few more bus lines into
the project. But the series did cause a stir in the community. When spot-on
criticism was presented in letters to the editor, the series was defended
(internally) as casting light on a long-overlooked part of the community.
But this light illuminated nothing. In the end, it was a celebration of
black victimhood and the never-ending white racism (overt, subtle and
institutional) that forced poor black men to run for their lives across
a busy freeway. And it just might have been the last nail in the coffin
of my liberalism.

Part
II
In 1997, we received word that the Ku Klux Klan was going to march
in our fair city in the fall. Many of us who had worked at the paper before
it was swallowed up by that huge media corporation were like, Eh,
OK. Put the story low on the local front, because hate-group monitors
such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and others go out of their way
to emphasize that these nuts are craving publicity and confrontation.
Wed followed the same strategy at a much smaller paper I had worked
at when the Klan came to town. The result was that about a dozen people
came out to watch about a dozen Klansmen march around and holler for about
a half-hour. That was it. But in the budget meeting that day, it became
obvious that we were not going to have anything like that. Our new, ambitious
executive editor was adamant that this was a major story that needed to
be the lead story on the front page.... The march itself was unbelieveable.
I dont think the city had seen anything quite like it since the
Civil Rights era. Something like 2,000 people showed up to scream and
jeer at about two dozen KKK a**holes. There were several scuffles and
a dozen or so arrests. Klansmen were pelted with rocks and eggs, and some
of them had their hoods pulled off. Now that all sounds well and good,
and I certainly feel no sympathy for these racist monsters, but this was
exactly what the Klan wanted! They got to portray themselves
as brave defenders of the white race to their target audience.
They were videotaping the whole spectacle to use in recruiting. And wed
set the table for them!

Part
III
We got our first taste of corporate-mandated diversity
not long after the media behemoth swallowed up our daily paper. It came
in the form of... diversity training! Argh! If youve ever worked
for a big corporation, you probably know the drill. Everybody files into
a conference room. The lights dim. A PowerPoint presentation is made about
the different communication techniques of different ethnic groups (Hispanic
people tend to use more hand gestures... Black people tend to speak loudly...
Asians tend to be more deferential) that only seemed to reinforce
stereotypes. Also, there was a short video. The only part that stuck in
my mind was the segment where the white actor complained to another white
actor about a black co-worker getting a promotion solely because of his
skin color. The video warned against the dangers of making broad assumptions
about people or situations without complete information, but the real
message was clear: Do not question the companys affirmative-action
policies! Ever! Or youll look like the bigot in the video!

Part
IV
A couple of years later, we were looking to fill a fairly important
position. Our assistant managing editor (AME) was steered to a candidate
named Lamont Washington (not his real name) by our new executive
editor (the same minority mentioned above), who sent our AME an e-mail
that said something along the lines of this: Heres
a resume from Lamont Washington. Lets get him in here for an interview
as soon as possible. He sounds like hed be a good, solid minority
candidate. Well, Lamont showed up a couple of days later
for his interview, and he turned out to be a big old country-fried white
boy! Surprise, surprise, surprise! Years of newspaper experience,
but pale as a ghost. Needless to say, he didnt get a marathon two-day
interview (more like a half-day) and he didnt get hired. Amazingly,
neither did a Ivy-League-educated white guy who applied for the job, a
copy editor who was working on the international edition of a world-famous
newspaper. (His wife was about to have a child, and they were looking
for a change of pace from the big city.) Who did we hire? A young, minority
copy editor from a paper that was about the same size as ours. He ended
up getting fired several months later when it became obvious he couldnt
handle the responsibilities thrust upon him.

A two-part article on the USA and Iraq by Jonah
Goldberg @ National Review Online:

Baghdad
Delenda Est (Part One)
Anyway, there are any number of excellent reasons to topple Saddam
Hussein: We should have done it the first time; he tried to murder the
first President Bush; hes developing weapons of mass destruction;
he gassed the Kurds; hes got that pickle-sniffer mustache; whatever.
I dont care. All of that is a conversation for another day. The
point for now is that Iraq shouldnt have existed in the first place.
Its lasted this long thanks to the Stalinist repression of the Baath
regime. And the only reason we didnt get rid of it last time was
that the Saudis despise the idea of toppling Hussein because they dont
want us to establish an attractive alternative to the nasty form of government
they profit from. Well, boohoo for the Saudis. If they hadnt found
oil on their land theyd be a trivia question for students of comparative
government today. Wouldnt such a huge move inflame the Middle East?
Sure. Wouldnt such a humiliating effort give Osama bin Laden exactly
what he wants? Yes. Wouldnt this cause the European diplomats to
drop their egg spoons in disgust over such barbarism? Most definitely.
Wouldnt the civilized world  with the notable exception of
the British  turn its collective back on us? I guess so. All that
would in all likelihood be true. Until we win.

Baghdad
Delenda Est (Part Two): Get on with it.
I know  from painful experience  that there are lots
of people out there who subscribe to the bumper-sticker slogan peace
through strength is like virginity through f**king. I had to argue
with such folks through all of college (and much of high school). Such
statements are black holes of stupidity  idiocy is crammed into
such a small space that it folds upon itself and bends all reason and
logic in its proximity. If peace cannot be attained through strength,
I invite one of these bespectacled, purse-carrying, rice-paper-skinned,
sandalistas to walk out into a prison yard. Lets see how receptive
Tiny and Mad Dog are to entreaties over the futility of violence. Sir,
theres no need for fisticuffs, I would be glad to share
my Snapple with you. Cant you see this sort of conflict is precisely
what the multinational corporations want? International relations
is much more like a prison yard than like a college seminar at Brown.
Yes, relations between democracies may be cordial  but
that is an argument for turning Iraq into one, not for leaving it alone.
Its ironic: All of these people who think it imperative that the
United States broker peace in the Middle East seem to think its
a coincidence that the United States is the dominant military power in
the world. If military might means nothing, why arent the Arabs
and Israelis bending to the will and rhetoric of the Belgians or the Swiss?

On
the Prosing of Poetry
Before writing was invented, poetry was used to mark special occasions
and strong emotions and to burn the necessary stories  the myths
and truths of a culture  into the memories of the people. Mnemonic
devices such as sound, rhythm, and heightened, pictorial language, economy
of expression (epigrammatic speech that encodes many meanings
in as few words as possible) and assonance, consonance, alliteration,
parallelism, were the branding irons used for the task. As well, these
devices were incantatory, stirring primal responses to their sound and
rhythm, and creating an atmosphere for the sacred and magical. Although
spoken, poetry was not common; it was instead, a singular kind of speech,
reserved for relaying important or sacred events, ensuring that such events
would be remembered almost in a physical way, in the bodys deep
response to sound, rhythm and imagery. Speaking poetically served a purpose.
Speaking prosaically also served a purpose  to negotiate everyday
reality, to speak of those things which were common to all and not worthy
of long remembrance  to speak of the world in transit. Our ability
to write did not erase the distinction. It took contemporary American
poets, writing in deliberately flat prose about insignificant personal
events and feelings; and editors, publishers and critics dubbing such
anecdotes and everyday journal entries poems, to erase the
distinction. We have reached the point we are being asked to believe that
a text block, chopped randomly into flat, declarative lines, is a poem.
We are told to kneel and stare at this specimen of dead lines laid out
in its little coffin on the page, and declare it alive. What do we say?

I=N=C=O=H=
E=R=E=N=T
The need for coherence appears to be basic, perhaps even neurological.
Science has proved the human brain strives to find a pattern, an order,
a meaning in chaos. What isnt coherent, we strive to make so. It
satisfies us. Thus, before settling for separate, unconnected pieces,
beautiful as they may be, we will look hard for connections. While shapes
and colors can become untethered from their representation, or meaning,
a poem can only become fully untethered from meaning if it is without
words. This is because the smallest irreducible piece  the word
 retains meaning, in and out of context. A totally meaningless poem
would logically consist of a blank page. In spite of this difficulty,
some poets do manage to make extremely close approaches to the state of
meaninglessness while still using words.... In order to save us from the
Western capitalist construction called a poem, the Language Poets had
to destroy it. But two other possible reasons for writing Language Poetry
come to mind: [1] The poet cannot succesfully create a coherent poem and
so makes a virtue of his failure. [2] The poet cannot successfully create
a coherent poem and so uses poem-as-pretext for expounding critical theories
 something he or she can do, and that, happy coincidence, ensures
an academic career.

The
Argument for Silence: Defining the Poet Peter Principle
The tension between career and vocation
in poetry is nowhere more obvious than in academia where poets take a
sabbatical in order to write poetry, but never take a sabbatical
from writing poetry. I believe that a certain variety of established
poet, perhaps those with a substantial number of books, would benefit
greatly from a poetry sabbatical. There is evidence of a need for poetic
silence all around us. We see it every time we read a denatured poem by
a renowned poet, usually in a renowned publication; evidence that the
enabling editors of such publications have failed in their duty to enforce
last call. For example, poets James Tate, Philip Levine and Mary Oliver
have each produced more than 16 books of poetry. Whatever has driven this
production, it is clear from the trajectory of all three poets that something
must stop it. In all three cases, a windiness, a wordiness, a kind of
poetic logorrhea can be found in their latest work in contrast to the
fire and compression in their early work. Flatlined, barely pulsing, their
latest work is being kept alive by extraordinary means: the artificial
resuscitation of continuous publication.

Common
Sense and Sensibility
Economists are not well thought of these days by environmentalists.
Or so it seems from accounts such as a recent Scientific American excerpt
of Edward O. Wilsons book, The Future of Life. He characterizes
economists as narrow, myopic environmental ignoramuses.... Its true
that economists have trouble with the views of many environmentalists.
But this just reflects our frustration with the ecologists use of
the most naive and inappropriate economic models and assumptions in their
forecasts and policy prescriptions. Thats why Bjorn Lomborgs
new book The Skeptical Environmentalist is such a distinctive,
rare, and important work. In addition to sharing the ecologists
concerns about aquifers, sustainability, and global warming, Lomborg accepts
the economists paradigm. By combining economics with ecology, he
comes up with a rational, balanced analysis. Unfortunately, environmentalists
denial of the validity of economic analysis runs through much of their
criticism of Lomborgs work.... Environmentalists tend to assume
a constant relationship between inputs and outputs. If you are going to
produce X tons of grain, then the acreage of land required will be X/y,
where y is the average yield of an acre of land. Economists call this
the fixed-coefficients model, because the relationship between
acreage and grain is governed by the coefficient y. Simply put, this is
not a realistic model. In practice there are always a variety of production
techniques that use different combinations of inputs to produce the same
output. The fixed-coefficients model applies, if at all, only in the very
short run. In the long run, there is substitution and technical change.
Substitution means that producers will vary the inputs used in production,
depending on changes in the cost of various inputs. For example, if land
becomes more expensive, producers will substitute capital, labor, fertilizer,
or other resources in order to utilize the most efficient combination.
The other long-run factor is technical change. As we accumulate knowledge,
we come up with ways to produce more output with fewer resources.

Lomborgs
Lessons
Economists use interest rates to discount future benefits and costs.
Because of discounting, environmental costs that are out in the future
are given less weight than todays economic goods, including todays
environment. Ecologists suspect that economists are being short-sighted,
when in fact we are being rational. The interest rate represents the price
at which the economy can trade off future output for present output. What
discounting says is that tomorrows output is cheap in
todays terms. Undertaking a large expense today to avoid the same
expense tomorrow is inefficient. Ecologists worry that we are consuming
too much now, while depriving future generations of resources and leaving
them with large unpaid environmental bills. Economists, on the other hand,
argue that by investing in science and research we are providing a legacy
of wealth to future generations. The assets that they inherit in the form
of capital and know-how will be much greater than any environmental liabilities.
In The Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjorn Lomborg makes a
strong case against the Kyoto Protocol, which attempts to restrict carbon
dioxide emissions in order to forestall global warming. Even as one who
accepts the thesis of global warming, Lomborg suggests that the Kyoto
Protocol is a bad idea. Lomborg estimates a finite (albeit large) cost
to global warming. Also, because this cost will be borne in the future,
he applies a discount rate. If the present value of the cost of global
warming is finite, then it becomes possible to estimate the benefits of
policies to forestall global warming. Next, it follows that we can compare
benefits to costs. It is on the basis of these cost-benefit comparisons
that Lomborg is able to show that the Kyoto Protocol approach is unwise.

The
book of the century
Its unwise to read The Lord of the Rings as allegory
in any strict sense, but this commonplace personal odyssey, one shared
by millions in the modern age, is strikingly echoed in its plot. Frodo,
the child-size hero, must leave his beloved Shire and travel into Saurons
domain of Mordor, with its slag heaps, its permanent pall of smoke, its
slave-driven industries. When he returns after much danger and difficulty,
he discovers that the malicious wizard Saruman  as Shippey points
out, a techno-Utopian who began with good intentions  has industrialized
the Shire itself, cutting down its trees, replacing its hobbit-holes with
brick slums and factories and poisoning its rivers. In this regard, then,
The Lord of the Rings belongs to the literature of the Industrial
Revolution, a lament for the destruction of Englands green
and pleasant land that belongs somewhere on the same shelf with
Thomas Hardy, D.H. Lawrence and William Blake. But Tolkien saw something
wilder and stranger in the Sarehole of his childhood, and in himself:
a fading but still tangible connection to the distant, mythic past. If
his Shire hobbits are the West Midlands rural bourgeoisie of 1895 or so,
they have been catapulted backward into a world where they themselves
are the anachronisms, a realm of elves, dwarves (Tolkien insisted on this
nonstandard but ancient plural, although he would have preferred dwarrows),
wizards, dragons, goblins and black sorcerers.

A
curiously very great book
It is not merely the scale of mythic invention or the grand storytelling
that distinguishes it but also its tragic vision, the profound melancholy
mentioned by Lewis. Few if any heroic quests have ever had such a sense
of human frailty and weakness; although Frodo brings the Ring all the
way to the Cracks of Doom where Sauron forged it, in the end he is overcome
by temptation and claims it for his own. He is redeemed only by chance,
or by divine grace, which in Tolkiens world comes to the same thing.
He has shown mercy to the treacherous and miserable Gollum, who becomes
the accidental agent of Frodos and the worlds salvation. But
Frodo, the books ostensible hero, fails in his quest and is left,
like the knight who guards the Holy Grail, with a grievous wound that
can never heal (an Arthurian parallel Shippey has not noticed). Even the
victory wrought by the Rings destruction is a sad affair, in many
respects closer to defeat. Much of the magic and mystery drains out of
Middle-earth after Saurons fall, leaving behind an ordinary, only
slightly prehistoric realm dominated by human beings. Tolkiens most
beloved characters  Gandalf, the High-Elves Elrond and Galadriel
and the hobbits Bilbo and Frodo, both of them indelibly marked by the
Ring  depart over the western seas to a paradisiacal nowhere that
none of us on this shore will ever see. Tolkien liked to present himself
to friends and readers as a contented fireside hobbit, fond of tobacco,
simple food and late mornings in bed, and there can be no doubt, reading
his letters, that he was immensely gratified by the outpouring of love
and enthusiasm his work engendered. (And immensely irritated by some of
it; when a woman wanted to name her Siamese cats after his characters,
he replied that they were the fauna of Mordor.) But in reality
he was a strange and complicated man who wrote a strange and sad book,
whose complex of meanings we will likely never determine.

A three-part article on some current thinking
on the Koran in The Atlantic:

What
is the Koran? (Part 1)
Some of the parchment pages in the Yemeni hoard seemed to date back
to the seventh and eighth centuries A.D., or Islams first two centuries
 they were fragments, in other words, of perhaps the oldest Korans
in existence. Whats more, some of these fragments revealed small
but intriguing aberrations from the standard Koranic text. Such aberrations,
though not surprising to textual historians, are troublingly at odds with
the orthodox Muslim belief that the Koran as it has reached us today is
quite simply the perfect, timeless, and unchanging Word of God.

What
is the Koran? (Part 2)
Deviating from the orthodox interpretation of the Koran, says the
Algerian Mohammed Arkoun, a professor emeritus of Islamic thought at the
University of Paris, is a very sensitive business
with major implications. Millions and millions of people refer to
the Koran daily to explain their actions and to justify their aspirations,
Arkoun says. This scale of reference is much larger than it has
ever been before.

What
is the Koran? (Part 3)
Gerd-R. Puin speaks with disdain about the traditional willingness,
on the part of Muslim and Western scholars, to accept the conventional
understanding of the Koran. The Koran claims for itself that it
is mubeen, or clear, he says. But
if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply
doesnt make sense. Many Muslims  and Orientalists  will
tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Koranic
text is just incomprehensible. This is what has caused the traditional
anxiety regarding translation. If the Koran is not comprehensible 
if it cant even be understood in Arabic  then its not
translatable. People fear that. And since the Koran claims repeatedly
to be clear but obviously is not  as even speakers of Arabic will
tell you  there is a contradiction. Something else must be going
on.